Statistics, Posting Limit

[Kelley]

Kelley:
Well, I can say that personally I'm not wild about having
a post limit, but there are a few things it's intended to 
do:

-to help encourage more substantive posts/avoid multiple
brief posts.

-help avoid "tennis match" discussions -- you know, the sort 
of back and forth discussion between a couple members, 
something like you'd see in a chat.  (Sometimes these sorts
of discussions are really good, but more often they aren't.)

-help avoid people reading a thread and just dashing off a 
reply to each post as they come to it.  This also encourages
substantive posts, which also seems to raise the quality of
the discussions.

-help avoid the sense that any thread is being 'dominated' 
by this or that list member:  we actually did get complaints 
to this effect -- that people were feeling discouraged from 
participating in threads because they expected certain
members to 'pounce' on them immediately, and while those
'pouncing' members weren't explicitly attempting to quash 
opposing views, that was sometimes the overall effect of 
their posts.

-one more measure to help keep posting volume within 
'manageable' levels for members.

To add a bit more to the historical 'How This Rule
Came To Be' info that Susan and others have already
given, I found the below in old elves discussions.

To put it into perspective, these are from mid-July
2004.  The previous summer was OoP release, and 
while the elves knew it was going to be a madhouse,
it was way (*way,* WAY) more than we were prepared
for.  When it was happening we were stretched too
thin to come up with any good plans to implement
immediately to help the situation; we were just in 
crisis mode, sending hundreds of welcome messages 
each day, handling hundreds of pendings, reading 
hundreds of messages posted, etc.
 
Once that passed, we spent some time recuperating, 
but we also began discussing it all:  what could we
have done better, where did we screw up, how we 
could better prepare for the next time.

We were relieved that the next summer, 2004, 
wouldn't bring new canon, so we had a bit of time
to get some good ideas going.  The PoA film was
going to come out, so we were expecting an uptick
in membership and posting, even, by extension, on
main, as that had happened with the first two movies.

What we weren't prepared for was JKR's website.  
This, plus the fact that not long after her site's 
debut she awarded the Lexicon the fansite award 
(Lexicon links to HPfGU as a recommended discussion 
group), along with the expected PoA film uptick, 
caused a far bigger membership and posting surge than 
we were expecting.  (Heh, I remember myself and a few 
other elves just *living* in the pendings queue that 
summer.) <g>

So, we'd been talking already, trying to get a jump
start on preparing for book 6's release, when we
were slammed again (far less than OoP, but still 
really big and unexpected) and our discussions about
what we could/should do took on a whole lot more
urgency. ;-)

The idea of a posting limit had been raised during
the OoP craziness and so it once again came up  
with even more discussion.  These bits below are 
some of the statistics a couple elves put together 
during those discussions:

"Dicey:
It's official: the posting rate is through the roof.

Between July 1-12 (2004, US Mountain time), we 
had 2287 posts that hit the list.

920 posts hit pending, 787 were approved (85%).
1500 posts were posted by unmoderated members.

Which means that 65.5% of the posts were 
unmoderated.

During that same period, 387 members joined, 54 
(14%) of which also began to post. They delayed an 
average of 43.5 hours before posting.

Interestingly, 162 spam messages bounced because 
the senders weren't members. Be glad we don't have 
it set so that anyone can post.

Twenty-five members posted more than 20 posts 
during that time. 32% of them were moderated 
members. 

I also got membership stats from June 1 to July 12.

There were huge membership spikes around June 
15th and June 30th. No idea why. 

Eloise:
These are the statistics for yesterday, (July 13, 
2004, UK time) which was exceptionally busy, with 
221 messages.  Obviously, this is just a snapshot. 
I really should do this for a few more days.

These 221 messages were posted by just 89 
members. Now if you do the average, this sounds 
fairly reasonable, coming out at just under 2.5 
messages per poster, but in fact,

129 of those messages were posted by just 18 posters
64 of them were posted by just 8 posters
21 of them were posted by just *one* poster.

If we limited posters to posting just three messages 
per day, yesterday's total would have been down by 
71 messages, to 150."

Kelley again:
Take particular note of what Eloise says above:
21 messages in one day by one member.  64 by 8
people.  (And this wasn't new canon, it was just 
an exceptionally busy summer.)  We'd regularly 
seen particular members post 10, 12, 15 times a 
day.

Now, on the one hand, so what?  If someone has 
the time and interest to post a lot, and if they're 
being civil, making good posts, etc., what's the 
problem?

On the other hand, we *did* get some complaints 
from list members that this or that member was 
'dominating the discussions' or that they were 
feeling discouraged from posting because member 
so and so would 'pounce' on them and they didn't 
want the hassle.

>From a list elf perspective, how do you handle this?
Just tell the person that the list member in question
is posting within the rules, so that's it?  Tell the
posting-a-lot list member that people are complaining
that they seem to be dominating the discussions so 
they need to post less (thus a rule for them that's 
not for other members)?  Neither option is very 
satisfactory.  At any rate, that's just the one point.

While I keep getting behind and haven't had enough
chance to write out all my thoughts about this topic, 
I will say that this is one of those issues that, to 
me, is far less 'clear cut' than things like telling 
folks to snip, proofread, give proper attribution, etc.  
There are good reasons for and against having posting 
limits.

And like Random, I'd always felt that a posting limit
wasn't really the best way to accomplish what we 
were going for.  But, funnily enough, it seems to have 
succeeded where other things haven't.

Now, I say this because: 

-posting rates *have* been lower.  This could be due
to all sorts of other factors, though.

-and some folks have said that the existence of a 
posting limit has 'forced' them to make more effort
in making their posts substantive.

However, I don't have any statistics on this, no other 
facts, so while it does seem the limit is responsible, 
I don't know that for sure.

Gah, I do have lots more to say about all this, but 
this is happening at a bad time for me, I just don't
have the time to devote that I would need.  Anyway, 
as Shaun said, the elves discussed this extensively, 
both when we were trying to decide whether to have
a limit at all, then again when we were trying to 
decide whether to raise it from 3 to 5.  I believe 
pretty much every pro and con that's been raised here 
on FB was raised in the elves' discussion as well.

None of that means that this is set in stone, 
irreversible.  I'm *very* glad to hear how more folks 
feel about this, and would love some more suggestions 
and ideas.

--Kelley